Man About Golf

RENO, Nev. (AP) -Matt Bettencourt will play in the PGA Championship for the first time thanks to an excellent eagle, pristine putting and a caddie who kept him calm.

That he shot 1-over on the back nine just made it dramatic when Bob Heintz missed a three-foot putt on No. 18 that would have forced a playoff in the Reno-Tahoe Open.

Instead, Bettencourt won for the first time on tour, shooting a 4-under 68 on Sunday that earned him a $540,000 check and an invite to Whistling Straits next month.

``I made some great up and downs,'' Bettencourt said. ``I feel like I'm as good of a bunker player as anybody in the world.''

After Bettencourt's eagle on the par-5 11th, he closed with a birdie and two bogeys, including on No. 18. He also bogeyed the par-4 14th at Montreux Golf & Country Club.

The best putter at Reno all week, Bettencourt had 12 one-putts and only 24 total on Sunday. Bettencourt said a lot of the credit for keeping him calm down the stretch went to Matthew Achatz, his caddie on loan from Rocco Mediate while Mediate was working as a TV analyst at the British Open.

``Thank you, Rocco, for letting me use him,'' Bettencourt said. ``He made me believe in myself.''

Heintz, who shot a 69 Sunday, started the week trying to qualify for a Nationwide Tour event in Ohio before he was notified he'd qualified for Reno and hopped plane to Nevada on Tuesday.

``You hate to see somebody miss one like that at the end but at the same time I played well enough all week to win and didn't feel like I was really getting the bounces I needed until today,'' Bettencourt said. ``I'm just so excited, I'll take it any way you can.''

Heintz, a 40-year-old graduate of Yale with a degree in economics, was pleased to come away with $324,000 for finishing second.

``I think it's my biggest check ever,'' Heintz said. ``I kind of played like the Bob of old where my survival instincts kicked in and my short game was just shy of brilliant all day. I holed out three times from off the green.''

John Merrick and Mathias Gronberg each shot 69 and tied for third at 9-under.

Robert Gamez (68), Kent Jones (68), Alex Cejka (69), Kevin Stadler (70) and Craig Barlow (72) all finished another stroke back at 8-under.

Bettencourt won the money title on the Nationwide Tour in 2008 and tied for 10th at the U.S. Open last year. He finished 111th on the PGA money list with $740,037 that year.

Bettencourt had a three-stroke lead with five holes to play Sunday but failed to get up and down out of a greenside bunker on the 491-yard 14th.

He drove into the rough left on the 477-yard par-4 15th and had to hook his approach around a tree 165 yards to just right of the green.

He chipped up to 6 feet and made the par putt and scrambled his way to another par on the par-3 16th when he missed the green off the tee, but chipped up to 8 feet.

On the 636-yard, par-5 17th, Bettencourt hit his second shot into a greenside bunker but blasted out to 5 feet and rolled in the birdie to get to 12-under, two strokes ahead of Heintz, who made an 8-foot birdie putt on the 17th to set up the drama on the final hole.

Earlier, Bettencourt chipped in from 10 feet away in the rough at the par-5 ninth for his third birdie of the day to make the turn with a one-stroke lead over Heintz.

On the 584-yard 11th, he hit his second shot 276 yards onto the edge of the green and made a 7-footer for eagle.

Scott McCarron, a former Reno resident and Montreux member who served as the tournament host, started the day at 10-under with a one-stroke lead over John Mallinger and Robert Garrigus. But he fell to a tie for 35th at 1 under with five bogeys and two double bogeys on the way to an 81.

Mallinger had a quadruple-bogey 9 on the 616-yard 9th - dropping twice from unplayable lies after driving wide left into the trees and sage brush - en route to a 77 and a tie for 21st.